Oddbean

By "follow best practices", you mean "not using Bitcoin", right? That's the only way your words make sense. If you pay someone without spending the full UTXO, you're always creating some sort of a pseudo identity. Say you paid for a domain online, then bought dinner using the change. Your face is now linked to that domain thanks to CCTV cameras. If you paid for a VPN, then sent the change to someone on Nostr, your social graph is now linked to your IP address. It just takes some digging and a few subpoenas. Bitcoin is good and useful. But you have to acknowledge its flaws. Otherwise, we're no better than a cult.

You know Bitcoin is programmable money? You know you can set your changes address to another wallet you own with a different set of XPUBs. You can pay for a VPN with Bitcoin lightning and generate no change. My IP address is never my own, not only because of a paid VPN but also because of tor combined with that. Digging and subpeonas will get them to a different REAL IP address everytime. Then there is blockstream, FM radios, etc. Just because you haven't educated yourself about how Bitcoin works doesn't mean it doesn't. Next the monero shills will tell us that monero protects them from security cameras for their infinity fiat money lol This sure has been an interesting Friday so far :)

Who cares what XPUBs your wallet uses? If you're doing it right there's no difference. One could even use a non-HD wallet and then there's no XPUB to begin with. Regardless, that change is still linked to your spend, though. It's a pseudo identity. Unless you use the VPN *on top* of Tor and not the other way round (which is a bad practice, ask the Tor devs), the VPN will gladly give the IP you're connecting from to the police. If you paid on-chain, your change is linked to it. Unless of course you trust that "no log" policies are real. > You can pay for a VPN with Bitcoin lightning and generate no change. Well, do you do that? Sure, you can break the link by depositing it into Lightning, or use JoinMarket. But all of that is expensive. > Next the monero shills will tell us that monero protects them from security cameras for their infinity fiat money lol I don't use Monero. But, yes, if there's no trace to follow, it doesn't matter that your face got captured on camera, because no one can see where the UTXO came from. Same with Lightning, but that only works at places that take it.

You can be somewhat pseudonymous on Bitcoin but that has nothing to do with privacy. All actions are still visible to everyone in the world. Monero is not meant to protect you from security cameras. It protects your transactional privacy on chain and nothing else. Everything you speak of is external to that and applies to every other crypto including Bitcoin. You shouldnt need to be an engineer to drive a car. Likewise, you shouldn't need to be one to achieve transactional privacy. That is just terrible design.